Reviews

Yep, the girl we see could be termed "self-loathing" or "mad". And yep she sometimes behaves in strange ways that irritate both her on-screen friends and us viewers.

What we never see is what she was like _before_ "the trauma". What we see is that "the trauma" has permanently scarred her, so that all her attempts at rehabilitation are self-destructive, and her friends attempts at healing uniformly eventually fail.

The skewed behavior we see is definitely _not_ what's recommended. If there's an (implied) "feminist message", it's something like "our sexist culture results in some individuals that are permanently so screwed up they not only can't help the culture, they can't even help themselves very much, like this one".

What we see is the disaster resulting from "the trauma". Reading what we see as some sort of "recommendation" fundamentally misses the whole point.

Watching a thoroughly screwed up person may be "educational", but it tends to not be all that much fun. So what else does this movie deliver? The first "what else" is that quite a few little bits are very funny, for example showing up to a porn shoot wearing a tongue-in-cheek skin-colored outfit (rather than a "birthday suit" as intended) and seducing the other model into playing along with the joke.

And the second "what else" is quite a bit of truly interesting art. It's unconventional, and a lot of it is vaguely disturbing. Yet at the same time it's undeniably beautiful.

This film is squarely in the "mumblecore" tradition: low production values, tiny crew, amateur actors, about the concerns of thirty-somethings, little or no music, and very naturalistic dialog. (I personally am not a big fan of "mumblecore" in general, and my rating reflects my generic dislike more than it does anything about this film specifically.)

"The Bridge on the River Kwai" is well over half a century old. Both visuals and sound have been thoroughly restored, so that current electronic prints are quite nice.

It's a "war film" ...and it's also an "anti-war film" It's about individual characters more than the larger conflict. In both these regards it seems to me most similar to "Apocalypse Now" ...except ending with "Madness, Madness" rather than "The Horror, The Horror".

It's a ripping good yarn. Even though many individual moments and scenes seem "hokey" these days, somehow they all add up to something that will hold your attention for hours.

Although it's not an "epic", and although it's shot on standard 35mm film, there are already suggestions here of what we'd see in "Lawrence of Arabia". Even half a decade earlier, here David Lean showed that he was enamored of shooting on location, shooting huge vistas, and shooting in a very wide format.

I think one of the reasons the film still speaks to us is its considerable ambiguity. Did Nicholson fall accidentally on the plunger, or did he do it intentionally in a last cry of remorse? Did Saito intend the knife for a possible but unlikely ritual suicide, a certain ritual suicide, or to kill Nicholson once he'd fully served his purpose? Did Warden throw his weapon in a temporary fit of frustration, or as the first sign of a permanent decision to have nothing more to do with war? Did the women express revulsion at the deaths of men they were fond of, or at the realization of just how violent war was? ...and many more.

The film was adapted from a book, except with the ambiguity ramped up, a character added, and different subplots emphasized. The book in turn was _loosely_ based on some real events the French author had no first hand involvement in (and may have even wanted to portray the British in a poor light).

There are many things that one may accept in the moment, but that after a bit of reflection can't possibly be real: Temporary reassignment of a soldier to the army of a different country - A British medic running his own hospital with no supervision, having his own building, and making his own independent decisions about who could work and who could not - The Japanese not having sufficient engineering talent to design and build a permanent bridge - Prisoners often allowed to whistle a tune that was very derogatory to the Axis - Inmates in a Japanese prison camp appearing in good health, with good uniforms, and at normal weight - Inmates in a Japanese prison camp arranging their own entertainment ceremonies - Nicholson staying alive in an unventilated corrugated steel box in full sun in that torrid climate for many days - The Japanese commandant giving in to the British prisoner officer without any advance agreement on getting something in return - The very first detent between jailers and prisoners being in a lengthy joint meeting around a conference table, and with the prisoners controlling the agenda - A soldier with serious doubts about killing being selected as part of an elite commando unit - A sailor suddenly knowing how to handle a gun and how to be a commando - and more.

In fact there are so many such departures from reality I can't imagine how anyone could possibly think this film is in any way trying to pass itself off as portraying historical events. To me, it's very obviously more of an imagined morality play than a portrayal of actual events. Nevertheless there have been public questions about its historical accuracy right from the beginning. Despite its adaptation from a book, which was in turn loosely inspired by some poorly reported events, some of the characters in the film could be identified with real individuals. And some of those people were still alive. And some of them complained noisily.

Simply put, this is one of the best and most arresting documentaries I've ever seen. I find it surprising that it's not very well-known. It's quietly enjoyable to watch, is thought-provoking, and is the kind of multi-layered deep meditation I expect critics and film schools to analyze closely. It's not like anything else I can think of. In fact my main reaction after my first viewing was WTF? What did I just watch?

This is the most "self-referential" movie I've ever watched. Yet it's done in such an understated way some could watch the whole thing and still not even be consciously aware of it. And it's not just one grand loop between two adjoining levels, but rather a whole bunch of small recursions all over the map. Once you become aware of it, it's likely that you too will find the recursion like nothing you've ever seen.

There are many different ways to read this film. Each of them is complete and self-contained, so you can enjoy the film in one (or more) ways without having to also "get" all the others. Possible readings include:

reading #1] a true story about slowly unearthing biological parentage (i.e. "is my father really my father?")

reading #2] a meditation on how we tell stories and on how different people relate the same story somewhat differently

reading #3] an experiment in just how far the "self-referencing" conceit can be pushed without the whole film collapsing

reading #4] a deconstruction of what "documentary film" means - What is "truth"? What is "accuracy"? Is it even possible?

reading #5] a film about filmmaking, in the tradition of "Day for Night" or "8 1/2"

The audio is mostly interviews and storytellers (where a "story" is a sort of one-sided extended interview). The video matches the words. Sometimes it's the speaker's face. Sometimes it's the action the speaker is describing. Sometimes it's very similar to the event the speaker is relating. Sometimes it's related science - for example when the voice talks about DNA the microscopic picture show chromosomes separating during a cell's Meiosis Anaphase. (Perhaps this was motivated by the science talks in "Mr. Nobody", which Ms. Polley was acting in about the same time she was thinking about this film.) And once in a while it shows the _opposite_ of the words, probably to let us know something isn't quite right.

Nearly half of the film is "flashbacks" on what is initially assumed to be home movie footage ...and some of it really is old home movie footage that's been found and edited in. But we start to become dubious. There's so very much of this footage, and it seems to match the needs of the modern day filmmaker eerily well, and much of it does _not_ follow the stylistic pattern that's mentioned explicitly early on. We're eventually told when the camera first appeared; then it can be carefully noted that some of the footage is from _before_ this date. It also seems odd that the camera filmed so many things that the camera operator couldn't possibly have been present for or even known about. We keep seeing fragments of a clip with Mom and a male on a footbridge - careful examination reveals the male isn't always the same person. Finally we see some really explicit clues: the nowadays director appears in one of the clips, the director is seen giving acting instructions to her Mom, some of the people in the clips are seen getting their film makeup applied, and one camera actually shows another filming one of these clips. A few minutes later it's made even clearer to those that have missed it so far: the exact same scene switches back and forth between the appearance of one of these historic clips and the appearance of the modern day film, then we see Ms. Polley herself both inside that scene and also filming at the same time, and finally realize what she's holding is an old Super 8 camera. The end credits confirm that while some of the flashback clips are authentic, many of them were recreated.

Already at the very beginning "things are not what they seem" is thrown in your face. Pictures of interviews are purposely mis-framed to give away hidden wires, mic booms, light reflectors, tripods, and so forth. Later, interviewees occasionally break the fourth wall, primp on camera, or say outrageous things. We eventually realize the entire family is deeply embedded in the Canadian show-biz world, so deeply that some of the main characters actually had careers as stage actors at one point, and many of the rest were involved in other aspects such as producing or casting. Sure enough, it eventually becomes clear that the "honest" interviews with the main characters are in fact acted. There's even a comment about somebody "falling in love" with the stage character he was playing rather than with the actor himself.

The line between "in front of the camera" and "behind the camera" is shown to be overly precious. It's not even all that well defined; what does it mean when at the same time the visual is in front of the camera, but the audio is behind the camera? At some points a character on camera gives a suggestion for how the film could be edited at that point, then that exact thing really happens. Name any "rule" of documentary filmmaking you like, or any "theory" of how documentary films should guarantee they're presenting "the truth". It's mentioned here, then gleefully flouted or debunked. This film is so clever and so thorough (in its understated, un-obvious way) that it feels like nobody else should ever again make a "self-referential documentary", because the last word has already been spoken.

"I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" is stylistically very different. It's composed of very long takes with an unmoving camera, has almost no dialog, no non-diegetic music, mostly either very long shots or closeups (few medium shots or sorta-long shots), and pacing often described as "extremly slow".

Its two interwoven stories start out separate, then slowly combine. The actor Lee Kang-Sheng plays the "Homeless Guy" in one story and the "Paralyzed Guy" in the other. Although both stories start out hyper-realistic, by the end the Homeless Guy story shows noticeable gaps and even seems a bit supernatural.

The film is "about" more than just one thing. For example the English title "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" and the Asian title literally translated as something like "eyes circled in black" are completely different ...but both refer to some central theme of the film.

Much attention is paid to bodily functions -including sex. There's little in the way of bare skin or conventional love scenes; it's not reminiscent of the "soft porn" of a few art movies. The attention isn't especially lascivious; in fact it's sometimes either a bit silly or just plain funny. The emphasis is definitely there though; is it really all in service of the stories, or has it been exaggerated (maybe for shock value?)?

The marvelous last shot is so long, slow, mysterious, and moody I immediately thought of Andrei Tarkovsky. (It requires many tens of seconds just to figure out where the heck you are and what you're looking at.) It sums up the entire film in one unforgettable image.

The DVD I got from Netflix -which seems to be the only version available to English speakers in Region 1- is awkward, but adequate. The subtitles are burned in, and have even more than the usual difficulties with slang and with song lyrics. Worse (and unfortunately like _many_ DVDs), the subtitles give no hint of what language is being spoken (Malay, Chinese, Bangladeshi ...maybe even Hindi?), not even when that's central to the story. There are no "bonus" materials. And aspect ratio jumps around oddly between Academy, letter-boxed, and fullscreen widescreen.

Because the style is so different, it's easy to jump to the mis-conclusion the stories too are "just plain weird". The truth is after just a little help with cultural translation, the stories are actually rather prosaic. You should know:

1) In many Asian countries with significant Chinese minorities, their stereotype is overly concerned with money, disconnected from the local culture, and morally stunted. This negative stereotype appears in the movie many times, beginning with the scam artist's apparent direction that anyone that doesn't speak Malay should be treated as a second class citizen and beaten more severely, and the comment that "the Chinese landlady would be very upset if she knew". It continues with the callous treatment of the nurse/waitress, and the almost exclusive focus on money -downplaying even possible emotional ramifications- when selling the house. It _might_ even account for a sexual attraction of the Chinese grandmother to her own son ...or at least to someone else who looks very similar.

2) The Malaysian economy was vigorous and developing rapidly for several decades in the last century, so much so that many young males from Bangladesh arrived as foreign workers. But that economy was wrecked by the Asian financial crisis beginning in the late 90s. Buildings in progress were abandoned (hence the flooded shell). And most of the foreign workers were stranded, unable to afford the transportation to go back home. And because many of them lacked either language skills or identification/permit papers, and had a different appearance, they were unable to "assimilate".

3) Not long after, a very nasty fight between politicians who used to work together was front and center in Malaysia. The former prime minister Anwar Ibrahim faced trials on trumped-up charges of sodomy. Because of police violence, he once appeared in court with black eyes (hence the Asian title of the movie). And introduced as evidence during the trials was a mattress, supposedly stained with his semen.

4) From everything seen in the film, the relationship between the Homeless Guy and Rawang can appear to be entirely platonic. But almost certainly the opposite was intended. A homosexual relationship could be hinted at only _very_ obliquely, partly because of censorship threats in Malaysia and partly because the actors were unwilling to be more explicit.

5) Many of the songs are either entirely western, or have clear western influences. (For example the busker's song lyrics seem to have originated in the old four-and-twenty-blackbirds nursery rhyme.) It's unclear just what this really means though. Maybe it's just hyper-reality. Or maybe it's meant to show the continuing pervasive influence of western culture. Or maybe it's nothing more than a shout-out to those paying the bills - the film was "commisioned" by the New Crowned Hope festival, Vienna's celebration of Mozart.

6) Haze and wafting smoke in Kuala Lumpur (in fact in much of Southeast Asia) because of huge forest fires in Indonesia is not "symbolic" - it really did happen in summer 2006. Fortunately Tsai Ming-Liang was able to incorporate it seamlessly into his stories, as otherwise he might have had to suspend filming for months.

7) An interpretation of the structure of the film is that Paralysed Guy is real, but the stories about Homeless Guy are his dreams. This immediately makes the duplication of the lead actor meaningful. Clearly Tsai Ming-Liang really wants to tell the Homeless Guy story, as it's far too lengthy and detailed and embellished to be "just a dream". Yet the thematic connections are actually there. Even though some of the details don't fit all that well, as an overarching schema this view makes more sense than anything else.

First a warning or disclaimer: I'm _not_ a good audience for this movie. My tendency is to not appreciate Westerns, so I don't see very many of them, and as a result I'm relatively unfamiliar with their conventions (and unwilling to accept most of the bits I do understand). Thus even when a movie like this one plays with -even plays against- those conventions, I often don't "get it".

I was intrigued by the story line and the possibility of character development. And I really liked one of Tommy Lee Jones previous directorial efforts: "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada". So despite my reservations I went to see this. Unfortunately it didn't work _for_me_ (your mileage may vary:-). Here are some specifics:

What first put me off was the wildly unrealistic portrayal of mentally ill people. Suddenly turned violent? Mute (and more generally uncommunicative)? Unable to maintain even their own bodily functioning? It felt like I was eavesdropping on the residents of Bedlam "acting crazy" in order to get bigger donations from their slumming visitors. Seeing some Indians portrayed as silly and even stupid felt like nothing more than the second punch from the same pattern.

There were too many shocking and sexual scenes for no particularly good reason. It felt as though the director had been given a list of required scenes (an uncompleted hanging, a completed hanging, an unromantic sex scene, a rape, a supporting actress fully nude, the starring actress fully nude, etc.) and "checked off" each one. Some were so disconnected from events I couldn't even decide whether they were flashbacks or hallucinations.

The mores felt muddled. Was this a "feminist" film or an "anti-feminist" film? Was the character Mary Bee Cuddy a stand-in for today's sensibilities, or a historical person living in a time that thought quite differently?

Many characters and scenes seemed so exaggerated they were "cartoonish". The dinner visitor felt more like a stereotype than a man: falling asleep only a couple minutes into the music after his dinner ...and moreover audibly snoring? The drifter who tries to make off on horseback with one of the women was so smarmy I wanted to punch his lights out right there. The card sharps seemed overly concerned with respect/manners/propriety for where they were. And the hotel was ridiculous. In the middle of nowhere and with no obvious clients at all, yet expecting "investors"? With a table groaning under a load of pastries and other delicacies that weren't even available around there? An owner and his posse with such poor attitudes I looked for their "bad guy" badges?

Character development was largely absent. In particular Mary Bee Cuddy's actions near the end seemed to come out of nowhere and be quite inconsistent with the character she previously displayed. I'm told it actually made a lot more sense in the book, as she herself changed quite a bit over the course of the journey, so that by the end things that would have seemed inexplicable initially flowed from her new character. Sure George Briggs had some second thoughts, a "what the heck, be a nice guy" and even an "I actually care" moment, but they were so predictable and stereotypical I couldn't take them seriously.

I wished the production values were a bit higher. Several scenes in various open wooded places supposedly hundreds of miles apart all looked too much like they were shot in the very same small patch of woods. The "day for night" scene of Mary Bee Cuddy lost by herself on horseback was a little too obvious. And most of the costumes didn't have the expected "worn" look.

Some grownups will really like this movie, especially those with an absurdist sense of humor (or of style); kids probably won't "get it".

As you'd expect at a high end ski resort in Europe, people mix languages all the time, and when people from different countries that don't share another language want to socialize, they all comfortably use English. So the subtitles come and go every sentence, depending on whether English is being spoken.

It will keep you chuckling inside the whole time, but there will probably never be a laugh-out-loud moment. Everything's presented totally deadpan, as though the filmmaker wasn't aware of just how odd things appear (right:-). It's fairly likely you'll even see this movie advertised as a drama - true, it's not anything like a traditional comedy; and true, it has aspects of a drama; but... Over and over your reaction to the screen will be "that doesn't look quite right" or "you've got to be kidding" or maybe "it must be just me". It's a little like reading Lewis Carroll: very funny in hindsight, but you're never quite sure when to laugh (or maybe from a different viewpoint it's very serious and you shouldn't laugh at all:-).

Visually it's _very_ reminiscent of Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel". A whole lot of the same visual motifs show up: mountains, snow, things moving across the snow like some sort of demented chase scene, cable cars, fancy hotel, endless balconies, very obviously fake miniatures ...but no black and white scene. A new touch is the skillful use of the "whiteout": snow will blow, the screen will go all white, but then you'll glimpse something looming up out of the whiteness, but then it's back to all white again as though nothing happened. Something you probably haven't seen before is a long-distance cameo of what appears to be a UFO ...but for no apparent reason at all and with no subsequent references. Yet another new touch is showing actual avalanches in progress (not the gouge and the pile afterward, but the wave of snow _during_. There's more than one, and one of them is among the largest ever filmed.

There are a few huge scenes and breathtaking vistas that will make you appreciate the big screen. But my guess is all the comedy will resonate equally well on the small screen. So let your personal tastes dictate whether you see it in a theater or on disc.

The skiing scenes are quite realistic, what you'd actually see on a skiing vacation with little kids. Of course there's the obligatory slalom down a fresh face, chair lift, and back-country powder. But there's also ill-fitting helmets, quick release skis that won't release, rope tows, flags, red plastic snow fencing, the sudden need to pee half way down the slope, ill-maintained lifts and ramps that screech and groan and give jerky rides, oversleeping, spots where the chair lift is suddenly _above_ the tops of the trees, awkward and uncomfortable boots, skiing only a half day, almost getting hit in the head by the safety bar on the chair lift, piles of pizza boxes, the continual swish-swish-swish of cold dry waterproof fabrics, complaints about Internet access, even loosening all those ski clothes in order to go to the bathroom.

A trope that appears over and over is what I call "yank your chain". A scene will be inter-cut with some other visuals that -using your movie reading skills- you conclude means A happened. But then a character half hidden in the snow resolves into somebody different than you expected, suggesting B happened instead. But then an off-screen voice of somebody you thought was dead is heard, meaning C happened. But then there's what looks like a wrap-up with D happening. But then the dialog and action make it clear that something else (E) happened instead.

There's another throwaway subplot (not just the UFO one) that is never completed or resolved. (It does provide the setting for some odd philosophizing though.)

And there's a huge amount of ambiguity. The key event that everybody struggles with doesn't look like much when you see it actually happen; it's so unclear you'll wonder why some of the characters think it's so significant. The "friend" that shows up doesn't play just one role, but switches unexpectedly and rather dramatically between: old hippie, therapist, diplomat, playboy, insecure male, buddy, shaman, and faux parent. The ending has everybody walking down a road (a tip of the hat to "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"?) - their walking positions are sufficiently weird it's obvious something is being implied. But exactly what?

An unusual movie, but one that will be of considerable interest to some, especially those with either a philosophical bent or an interest in adult animation. Stir together the celebration of animation and the looniness of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?', the animated philosophical speculations of Richard Linklater's 'Waking Life', and the view from inside the movie industry of Altman's 'The Player'. Then turn the volume way up to more than double any of those precursors. The philosophy centers on what it means to be an actor (or more generally to make movies), especially in this age of CGI; and also provides healthy doses of speculation on the relationship between the movies and life in general, and of plain old "what's the meaning of life?" angst. It's sort of an adaptation of the story 'The Futurological Congress' by the Polish Science Fiction master Stanislaw Lem (who also wrote 'Solaris').

There are also a lot of secondary references to Naziism, including the pageantry at the Nuremberg rallies. The whole core of 'The Manchurian Candidate' is reprised, as is Slim Pickens riding an H-bomb down from the airplane in 'Dr. Strangelove'. Questions are raised about how physical disease (blindness, deafness) and oddball mental processing (merging of kites and airplanes and weather) are related, and when does a chemical "cure" for a syndrome become just "masking" the symptoms of that syndrome. And I doubt it's an accident that the analog of Toon Town looks like a fantasy in the middle of a desert, just like Las Vegas.

It's far more "out there" than even Ari Folman's previous 'Waltz with Bashir'. If you know you're prone to the "Whaaa?" reaction to unusual movies, you might plan ahead to watch this one twice.

The line between "fiction" and "reality" is thoroughly blurred. When an actor plugs a movie, is that further "acting"? The question of "what's acting?" versus "what's not acting?" is addressed over and over; perhaps the most pointed is when actress Robin Wright --whose storyline is similar to a common (mis)conception of her real life-- pauses in a hallway to gaze at an old poster of 'The Princess Bride' in which she actually played the title role of Buttercup.

It's very imaginative, but don't just relegate it to the 'trippy' category. There are enough big ideas and fertile juxtapositions and oddball sights to fill twenty normal movies. It isn't anywhere close to the usual "3-act movie structure" (in fact in sometimes it borders on inchoate), yet in its own unusual way it's engrossing and powerful. Throwaways come so fast you certainly can't keep up in the theater (and probably couldn't even freeze-framing): Was Sinatra in that queue? How did Botticelli's Venus get in this crowd? And wasn't that his Athena too, and with her Centaur? Which Picasso cubist painting is that guy from? And didn't I see Elvis? ...and on and on.

The credits list "Toon Boom" animation software. Toon Boom software is world-class, yet off-the-shelf (i.e. not "customized"), and more often used with 2D than 3D animation. So the result is consistently eye-catching and interesting and smooth and quite varied, but without being groundbreaking. My guess is the "quaint" appearance of the animation is due more to the conscious effort to work in the style of the '30s Fleischer Brothers than to the use of Toon Boom. As is common in my experience when Toon Boom is involved, the animation was done by a remote collaboration of a lot of small studios. The total number of people credited with having some sort of involvement with the animation is easily well over a hundred.

I happened on this fantastic film yesterday having never heard anything about it in advance. Similarities to my mind: The old film "Slaughterhouse Five" from the Kurt Vonnegut story about an individual who's 'come unstuck in time'. The not widely seen Alain Resnais film "Je t'aime je t'aime". And the interview/narration by a very old man with which Jack Crabb bookends "Little Big Man".

What are the themes? Real and deep (for a movie) and current science, especially about motivations, behavior and habits, and the physics of time. The importance of (fragmented and nonlinear) memory. Ennui once you meet all your life goals (goal too low? too materialistic? too silly and unrealistic? ...?). The obstacles of people and emotions that don't quite fit overcome for now, yet resurfacing in baleful form years later. What if some of the possible freak accidents all around all the time actually happened? How the most trivial incident can determine an entire life: 'how would my life have been different if I'd missed that train?'. So long as one doesn't choose, both possibilities remain open. What we call reality is really just someone's imagination - an author typing away, or a child mapping his future. What's the purpose of time's arrow? Now stir them all together so nothing predominates.

The film is endlessly visually inventive. Sudden close-ups, episodes of slo-mo in the midst of the action, showing things backward. Even a self-referential display of a DVD freezing and skipping was so realistic I was about to summon the theater staff. Sometimes the effects are unobtrusively motivated by the story line, other times they call attention to themselves. Sometimes they're physics stills come to life, as in the rather famous freezes of a drop of water hitting the surface of a pond here shown in full motion. Sometimes they're unique: although I've seen lots of sex scenes, I've never before seen a closeup of skin hairs standing up indicating arousal. Every scale and sensibility is probed: from the mundane smallness of an auto instrument panel to huge structures careening through outer space. Moving displays routinely occupy any large flattish surface -even clear or curved ones; an interior wall becomes a soothing pattern of constantly moving ocean waves. After a while, as an elaborate joke, we see helicopters submerging those wave walls back into the real ocean.

The astounding makeup is much more than the convincing age of the protagonist (including a few long wispy white hairs growing out of the baldness). Television announcers have microphones surgically embedded in their cheeks. We see the protagonist with an injured face immediately after an explosion - later his face carries a slight scar in that same place. Along with traditional tattoos, we see believable 3D ones. A seriously injured hospital patient has a bruise around his trach tube.

Much is very funny, in a cool ironic way that passes right by. Different couples explaining why they wanted a baby had me in stitches. The parody of live news is priceless. Non sequiturs and double entendres abound, making mulling the dialog a delight. A lost sneaker reappears later at giant size.And there's lots of subtle unreality. Accents come and go. Immediately after a pool rescue the pool is covered.

There are special effects galore. But they're unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. A few in service of the storyline are fairly obvious: an auto accident, an explosion, space travel, etc. But most are hidden. Just one example: a couple will be pouring morning coffee in their kitchen, hug, and in one continuous movement fall on the bed in their bedroom. It feels and looks so natural, until you think 'there was a wall there!' and 'that bed headboard was a kitchen table a moment ago!'. Counting all those, this movie has more special effects than any other I've ever seen.

Visual themes recur. A slick leaf on the pavement is responsible for at least three different accidents and life paths. And we see that leaf yet again as a child contemplates it. A bad dream about space travel shows up again much later as reality. A promise between teenage lovers seems hopelessly romantic at the time, yet many years later it's really carried out. Sometimes we see the same event from a different point of view; other times the event starts exactly the same, but then turns out differently, an alternate reality. Locations recur too, again sometimes from a different point of view. An imagined accident happens at a railroad grade crossing, a train station platform is shown several times, and a child trying to decide which way to run on the railroad tracks winds up running down the road instead. Near the end the camera pulls back and we realize they're all the same place.

Although sometimes tongue in cheek and almost never calling attention to itself, the science seems accurate. For example transport from a spaceship to the surface of a planet is shown by 'space elevator'. Yet it's never called out or named or explained, and mostly we only see parts of it. It's just assumed. The animal behavior experiments seem pretty current. The time the characters live in seems consistent with some interpretations of quantum physics. The wildest futures -suspended animation for example- are thrown in with the rest, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Then, just when you think this might be an episode of Mr. Science, something truly goofy appears: when the 'big crunch' happens, clockworks stop, then restart, except backward!

It sounds crazily fragmented, but marvelously it all hangs together emotionally. The film must have been created as much in the editing room as behind the camera. Never before have I seen an end credit thanking all the participants in scenes which were cut and never made it into the final movie.

Lots of archival footage and reminiscences by the people involved are deftly inter-cut with voice-overs and current interviews. From a technical point of view, this is a very well crafted documentary.

It focuses on Angela Davis herself and on the political events she was involved in. Although it mentions the larger milieu (things like academic philosophy, American social change, the civil rights movement, and Viet Nam) in passing, it doesn't focus on or drill down into that. Also, it's obvious some of her commitments were more than just political; they had some very personal and emotional aspects. And again, this isn't covered directly at all.

History will probably appreciate having this record. On the other hand rank and file interest will likely be limited by the "preaching to the choir" problem. This is not presented with "good guys" and "bad guys"; it's much more nuanced and clinical than that. Nevertheless, potential viewers with a pronounced conservative viewpoint may have a hard time watching it.

One of initial criticisms I remember is that Angela Davis's academic focus was so wildly out of sync with then-current U.S. academic fashions it was hard for a reporter to even take it seriously. It turns out she lived in Europe for quite a while, including doing her graduate studies there. As a result she absorbed a European academic focus, which was quite different from what went on in the U.S. at the time. In particular a focus on the philosophy behind "communism" was almost part of the furniture in Europe, but was very foreign in the U.S. Her having a different focus was a main reason UCLA recruited her, as they were having a hard time finding academics qualified to teach subjects like "Marxism".

I also learned that initially she had a very hard time breaking into any "revolutionary" organizations in the U.S. Her background and credentials were so un-revolutionary that most folks strongly suspected she was some kind of plant or informer. Often she was more than just not taken seriously; she was actively excluded.

This is certainly better than faded memories of old (and perhaps "spun") news reports. As with many documentaries, it focuses on the actual events, and doesn't delve into or speculate about motivations.

This film really got under my skin. And it's not just me. When the end credits rolled, I expected the usual wave of viewers rushing to leave, but it didn't happen - instead nearly everyone stayed in their seats to ponder silently or whisper to their neighbor or just let it sink in. It definitely makes one think. But I'm far enough removed in age from the protagonist (about sixty versus about fourteen) that it was always possible to maintain a little distance (not much:-), and so for me the movie wasn't quite as serious a punch in the gut as it could have been.

It seemed to me to move fairly briskly. But I strongly suspect someone accustomed to visually spectacular CGI action films would find it slow. It's portrayed linearly, without flashbacks or flash-forwards or intermixed editing. Time doesn't flow uniformly (or even noticeably) though - sometimes there are only a few tens of minutes between scenes, and other times apparently days have passed, and viewers would say it doesn't really matter.

This is a "road movie" of sorts (although most of the travel is _off_ the road, and the principal form of transportation is _not_ motorized). It's a psychological portrait of a young girl growing up very fast in a difficult situation. It might be categorized as a sort of "coming of age story", although such stories don't usually involve such turmoil of and conflict with and estrangement from the surrounding society.

The camera moves a lot - many of the shots appear to use a steadicam. The POV shifts. Sometimes it's what a particular character is seeing at the moment. Sometimes its a far off overview shot. Sometimes it's an extreme closeup -from an odd angle no human would ever assume- of something visually interesting (for example lacing up some shoes, or events viewed from inside a woodpile). And sometimes the camera's extreme closeup zeroes in on something that's more the focus of attention than the center of a visual field (such as a wrist-watch on a dead body).

It's not a "gore-fest". There are no shots of horrific destruction nor dead bodies that appear to be there partly for their shock value. On the other hand, it doesn't shrink from showing the deaths integral to the story either. Such deaths are usually shown as one of the characters would actually see them. So the attention shifts, sometimes scanning very quickly, yet other times lingering on something horrible that someone couldn't look away from.

The most similar recent movie I can think of is Terrence Malick's 'To The Wonder'. It's very episodic, following psychological attention more than narrative arc. The visual impressions are at least as important as the dialog. And while the broad outlines are clear (an epic journey, while at the same time leaving childhood, a sexual awakening, and a spiritual shift),.a closer view shows many things as rather ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations.

One specific example: Near the beginning of the film Lore's mother is shown tenderly wrapping an exquisite porcelain deer miniature. Later Lore is shown placing great value on her porcelain deer miniature, only to realize nobody else values it like she does. At the end of the journey Lore adds her miniature to a collection. Then later she breaks it intentionally. Is it all the same miniature passed on from Lore's mother to Lore, or do Lore and her mother have two miniatures that look very similar? Does the miniature illustrate some sort of mystical connection of mothering? Or does the miniature embody Lore's memory of her mother? Or is the difference between Lore and her mother that her mother could preserve a part of her childhood into adulthood, but Lore cannot do the same? Or is Lore's miniature an embodiment of her dying childhood? We just don't know for sure. Another specific example: Thomas's history is vague and inconsistent, and his photos don't match. Yet he has a concentration camp inmate identification number tattooed on his arm. Again we don't know for sure what's going on.

Many things are not what they seem - some people are not who they say they are. Every character is a mixed bag; there are no stereotypical black-hats or white-hats. Sometimes bad people do good things. Sometimes good people do bad things. Sometimes people are simultaneously good in one environment (like 'home') and bad in another environment (like 'work'). And the meaning of the war and of Germany's defeat is a matter of considerable disagreement and debate. Lore's attitudes do not suddenly snap to a new world-view. Rather the old and the new coexist uneasily for a long time (pretty much the whole film, and probably much longer), the contradictions are never entirely resolved, and Lore's actions make it clear she holds two contradictory world-views simultaneously and keeps flipping back and forth between them.

There are quite a few subtleties of plot that you probably won't get the first time ...or maybe even the second time, especially if you weren't prompted by some outside reading and scanned the end credits very closely. It may never even become completely clear who's really who. But it doesn't matter. The emotional impact is huge even if you don't follow everything.

This is most definitely not a sentimental tear-jerker. Nor is it mainly a good yarn. Nor does it sketch out an intellectual/philosophical approach to a difficult situation. What it does is make you feel deeply, and think real hard.

I realize I'm swimming against the tide, big-time, and so am somewhat reluctant to even say anything. But the truth is this film did not speak to me. Perhaps it's my age (about 60) or the film's age (about 65); I'm in the habit of expecting a little more subtlety. I approached this film in a straightforward way expecting a visceral experience, and I was disappointed. Perhaps instead I should have approached this film intellectually as a bit of film history. Why didn't I like it? -- 1) it seemed "corny", 2) the stereotyping seemed ridiculous, and 3) portrayal of a foreign culture was markedly uneven.

One of the supposed features often touted is how well Humphrey Bogart portrays the stages of a character slowly going mad. But what struck me was what we'd call nowadays "overacting" or maybe even "being melodramatic". Much of this is due to the scripted dialog rather than to Bogart: the character's sudden ruminations about "guilt" and "conscience" with no earlier referents felt obligatory and stagy ...sort of like walking into the last act of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The mise-en-scene didn't help either: his character disappearing into -and appearing to be consumed by- the flames of a fire was a little too obvious.

I groaned when the first Mexican bandits appeared with two bandoleers of bullets crossed over their chest, effectively screaming "bandit uniform". Some later bandits avoided that stereotype; instead they had an awful lot of of holes in their clothes and even multiple holes in their hat. Portraying _all_ bandits as overly macho, not valuing life very much, and not very smart felt too simplistic.

There are many good points of sensitivity to a foreign culture: long stretches of the actors speaking Spanish without much translation, knowledge of the value of different foreign coins, slightly different barbershop rituals, intimate familiarity with the ways of the local Indians, and even some plot points hinging on detailed knowledge of the ways of others. But at the same time there were several glaring exceptions. Indigenous people are stumped by a simple medical issue, and their automatic reaction is to seek help form a "white man". (Dr. Livingston anyone?) The medical help the white man offers is extremely simplistic, yet it's enough to get the job done and to thoroughly bamboozle folks. The proceedings are observed by a large tight circle of people, so large it's clearly everyone in the whole Indian village. The white man is rewarded not in any realistic Indian way, but rather with our own silly image of almost-heaven: being placed in a hammock and hand fed fruits by reverent attendants. (What, no harp?) And the bandits don't realize the "sand" is actually gold ...which of course is nonsense.